Businesses have increasingly discovered that the Internet can be an effective forum for recruiting participants for the purpose of executing a survey. Rather than rely upon in-person solicitations on the street and in shopping malls, a variety of survey services leverage Web-enabled survey solicitation mechanisms. Such survey solicitation mechanisms, often in the form of pop-up windows, seek willing survey participants from the millions of user's surfing the Internet on a daily basis. The purpose and subject-matter with which the surveys are associated (e.g., products, services, opinions, political views/elections, sporting events, health, etc.) is virtually limitless.
A particular example of on-line survey fulfillment services involves surveying users that have been exposed to a particular on-line advertisement (as well as those that have not) to gauge the effect/impression of the ad on the users. In addition to being a good advertising forum, the Internet has also proven to be a convenient and source of consumer survey participants to assess the impact of particular Internet advertising campaigns on exposed users.
Recruiting users to take surveys can be a challenging task. U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,145, entitled “RESPONDENT SELECTION METHOD FOR NETWORK-BASED SURVEY” proposes a method in which visitors to a Web site are randomly chosen to be solicited to take an on-line survey. If a visitor is chosen, then a graphic image soliciting the visitor to take the survey is transmitted from a surveyor to the Web site being visited. The image is then displayed to the visitor. If the visitor is not chosen, then a dummy image is displayed.
Another survey method is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,010,497, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EVALUATING AND/OR MONITORING EFFECTIVENESS OF ON-LINE ADVERTISING.” The method described therein involves determining whether a user has been exposed to an on-line ad by checking cookies stored on the user's computer. Based, at least in part, on this determination, a decision is made as to whether or not to solicit the user to take an on-line survey.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/900,674, filed Jul. 6, 2001, entitled “Method and System for Conducting An On-Line Survey,” describes yet another way to carry out on-line surveys. In that system, in response to receiving a request for a block of data from a user's computer, a determination is made whether the user has previously been solicited to take an on-line survey. Thereafter, computer-readable instructions are returned with the requested block of data that facilitate invoking a procedure for soliciting the user to take an on-line survey.
Another known survey recruitment scheme involves a variety of data and logic that acts upon the data. For example, a survey recruitment scheme often specifies a number of survey takers needed to complete the survey as well as the characteristics (including ad exposure) of the survey participants. Such information is used to guide whether an individual user, having particular traits, is recruited to take a particular survey. In known systems, such as the one described in the aforementioned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/900,674, a considerable amount of communications are potentially required between multiple servers and databases to administer recruitment of survey participants.